The Life God Blesses
I am convinced of this - “God loves to bless His children!”
What do I mean by that? Let me borrow words from Gordon MacDonald who writes – “God desires to pour out on people gracious and uncommon gifts: gifts might include personal affirmation, intimate relationship, extraordinary challenges to destiny, and remarkable energies that surpass the limits of we think of as normal....” The Life God Blesses, Nelson, 1994
Start working your way through the Bible, and you will discover a very long list of people that God blessed in various amazing ways.
Abraham, the father of the faithful, was called out of a pagan city, led on an amazing journey to the region of Canaan, and was privileged to discover the true nature of God. What a blessed life!
Joseph, was blessed by God to be the savior of his family, the prime minister of Egypt.
Moses, the father of the nation of Israel, was blessed with the leadership of a new nation, with the
revelation of the Law of the Holy God.
David, the poet king of Israel, was blessed early in his life with a faith that allowed him to face Goliath,
the Philistine hero in the name of the Lord. God gave him a personality that caused people to love
and follow him God blessed him with th g ift of writing hymsn (we call them Psalms) that God’s
people use to this day in to express their devotion to the Lord.
Esther, the Jewish queen of Persia, was blessed with beauty, both of face and of heart. God gave her extraordinary courage and she saved her people from annihilation.
Daniel was blessed with wisdom that made him a counselor to 4 kings and with influence that had an effect in a world empire. His integrity still inspires us afer 3,000 years!
Mary was blessed to be the mother of the Messiah, because of her devotion. Her faith in God has been an inspiration to women for centuries.
Paul was given grace though he was a self-righteous Pharisee. God found him, blessed him by knocking
him down, and then gave him revelations that he wrote in the New Testament letters that shape
our faith to this day.
If you know these Bible stories, you will also realize that in each of the examples I’ve chosen, there were extended times of intense trials. Despite being blessed these men and women lived in a world that brought them pain. They struggled with doubts and fears, and that they experienced moments of personal failure! The fact that they were blessed - did not give them a pass from the tests and trials that are common to the human experience!
For many of us there is a deep misunderstanding about what it means to have a blessed life.
At least in part that is because of the so-called ‘heath and wealth’ gospel that is heard all over this land. Too often the ‘American Dream’ and the Gospel of Christ get stirred into the same pot. Faith is twisted into ‘possibility thinking.’ God’s blessings are defined in terms of success, measured primarily by wealth and fame!
There is a terrible teaching that is all too common that says ‘if you believe enough, praying the right kind of prayers using the right words, you can make anything you want happen by using God’s power!’ It is a lie, the re-packaging of the most ancient sin of pride, which was introduced in Eden with the declaration, “You, too, can be a god!” God is God alone. We certainly must cooperate with Him in order to live in His blessings, but we are not solely the creators of our own destiny!
As I preach about preparing to prosper, I want to disavow the ‘health and wealth’ gospel up front. I am talking about a life of true blessing, a life marked by prosperity more important than wealth or fame, and a life of eternal significance which God loves to give to those who will walk by faith. REVIEW Gordon MacDonald’s definition of a blessed life –
“God desires to pour out on people gracious and uncommon gifts: gifts might include personal affirmation, intimate relationship, extraordinary challenges to destiny, and remarkable energies that surpass the limits of we think of as normal....” The Life God Blesses, Nelson, 1994
TEXT - Matthew 7: 9 - 11 Pew Bible page 1506
Our Heavenly Father loves to bless us.
That much the prosperity preachers get right! Where they err is in ignoring that God is the Ultimate Good Father, that He remains the One in charge, that He is never obligated by our prayers or good works to give us anything we want. He sees what is the very best thing in life for us, from the perspective of eternity, and provides all that we need, to live out the purpose and destiny He has planned for us!
Ill. –
I am a father to four children, all now adults. I love to give gfits to my children, to bless them! If it is within my ability to provide something for them that want, I love to do it. However, when they growing up, I never gave them all they asked for, even those things I could afford. Why?
A. Because some of the things they wanted were not good for them.
B. Sometimes I knew that in order to better serve God they needed to develop a different set of values so
I would not give them the latest trinket to feed their greed.
C. Other times I considered that they would be better served by working to own the things they wanted.
Though they could not understand it, I was often more loving in saying, "No," to a request than in saying, "Yes!" But overall, I delighted in providing in way that would lead them to experience the best in life as I understood life given my fallibility. A “No” to their request was just as much a way to demonstrate my love to them as much as a “Yes.”
So, the question then for me is this -
Since God loves to bless us, what can we do to experience those blessings?
The first concept that we need to understand in answering that question is the issue of covenant. The simplest definition of the word is promise or agreement. The Bible teaches us that God acts in purpose and that He creates laws and principles to guide the way to live in a way that maximizes His blessings! We can observe them in the natural physical universe as well as in the spiritual realm.
Ill. - natural law of gravity, a blessing if properly observed, a deadly force if ignored
Spiritual laws are much the same. He makes promises and agreements with us and expects us to faithfully obey them. When we do, we position ourselves to receive God’s blessings.
The whole idea of covenant emerges in the opening chapters of the Bible. When God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden, He said, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:16-17, NKJV) The tempter showed up, convinced Eve, who then convinced Adam, that they were missing out on the best of life (imagine that in a perfect world!) and they disobeyed. God kept His promise.
"Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains. By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return." (Genesis 3:17-19, NLT)
Abraham enjoyed a covenant relationship with God, too.
“The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” So Abram left, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there." (Genesis 12:1-5, NIV)
And how did Abraham get to enjoy the blessings promised? Faith expressed as obedience caused him to leave behind the tried, the true, the familiar, to own what God held out as his destiny.
Moses taught Israel the Law of God.
As he neared death, he called the new nation together to review the covenant that God had made with Israel.
READ- Deut. 30: 11, 15-16, 19-20
Once again we see that God’s promises are working to favor those who receive them with faith, the kind of faith that produces actions, not just the right kind of words.
There is still a covenant that God has made with you and me.
God’s covenant of Grace, put into effect through His Son, Jesus Christ, gives us access to the life of the Spirit, who empowers us to keep the commandments of God, and as we keep His commandments, we are blessed.
At the Passover Supper he celebrated with His disciples on the night before His crucifixion, Jesus picked up the cup of wine from the table and said, “This cup is the new covenant between God and his people—an agreement confirmed with my blood, which is poured out as a sacrifice for you." (Luke 22:20, NLT The Bible further clarifies the nature of the covenant that God has made with us - "Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant." (Hebrews 9:15, NIV)
How do we enjoy the benefit of blessings under this agreement?
Again, let me say - by the same principle as all the other covenants - faithful obedience. We put our faith in Christ, accept that He has forgiven our sins and He makes us alive by the Spirit to the person and Presence of God, and then we live in obedience. The result is that we enjoy His blessings!
Remember the curse that came on the earth because of Adam’s disobedience? Thorns and thistles, fear and frustration, alienation from God, our source of life. But Jesus came to bring us news of a new agreement. The result of our sinful disobedience to God’s laws - sorrow and death - have been taken away by the Cross.
The Word says,
"Christ redeemed us from that self-defeating, cursed life by absorbing it completely into himself. Do you remember the Scripture that says, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree"? That is what happened when Jesus was nailed to the cross: He became a curse, and at the same time dissolved the curse. And now, because of that, the air is cleared and we can see that Abraham’s blessing is present and available for non-Jews, too. We are all able to receive God’s life, his Spirit, in and with us by believing—just the way Abraham received it." (Galatians 3:13-14, The Message)
What a remarkable promise. The rich blessings of God, first promised to the father of the faithful, Abraham, are now available to all men and women, who by faith receive them through Christ Jesus.
I want to hammer home this point this morning –
If you want to enjoy God’s blessings, if you want to prepare yourself for prosperity -
you have a choice to make today, tomorrow, until the day you are finally and fully transformed into the glorious state of those who are eternally free of sin and death.
The choice is to live in faith, expressed in obedience.
Two questions confront us.
1. What does God teach us about the way we are to live?
2. Do we really believe what He says, with faith deep enough to cause us to obey His commands?
Jesus illustrates the importance of daily faith that leads to obedience in this text.
TEXT - Matthew 7: 24-27 Pew Bible page 1506
Is your life built to last on a solid foundation that lets you weather the storms that will inevitably come your way?
Are you constructing a life that God can bless - day by day, doing that He teaches you to do?
I recently was talking about a person who was living in a house built in a development about 15 years ago. They were putting out money to fix one thing after another - a leaky roof, a cracked foundation, a failing septic system, appliances that were breaking down. They remarked that the builder had built fast and to look good. He wasn’t worried about building to last, just building to sell! The quality, or lack thereof, was being revealed in time!
Are you faithfully obeying God’s word in your marriage?
We can build a lasting intimacy with our spouse, with fidelity to our vows, with deep and abiding love s God teaches, or we can live selfishly, seeking our own interests over those of our spouse. If we seek our own way, we weaken the structure and when the storms come, our marriage may collapse around us!
Are you taking God to work with you?
God teaches us to live with integrity, to work hard remembering that we are working for Him. Doing things God’s way will be costly short-term, but bring His blessings. Does your faith keep you on target?
In my previous church, we met a man I’ll call Bill. He showed up in town to do home improvements. Soon, he had several crews working and he appeared to be making a lot of money. In a matter of months, he appeared to have a built a business to envy. But, six months later, Bill disappeared in the night, fleeing our town, as he a few towns before us. He left behind bills that were unpaid, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and he beat his crews out of thousands of dollars in pay. His method was to bid low, knowing he was not going to pay his bills, collect his money, and then - just as the law was ready to catch up with him - run for the hills!
He faked me out and I really liked him, even considered him a genuine Christian. When his fraud was revealed, I wondered to myself how he slept at night? Sure, Bill had some money, but he had no respect, no honor, and certainly not the blessing of God!
Are you letting God’s truth shape your core values?
God teaches us to love, to give ourselves away, to forgive, to live for eternity, not just for today. Conventional wisdom teaches us to look out for #1, to seek advantage, to make sure that no one is allowed to diminish our dignity. It takes real faith, the work of the Spirit, to be transformed in our core values.
In his book, Revolution of Character, Dallas Willard writes -
"A Christian’s aim is not just to act differently, but to become different in his inner being. We’re not just learning to become nicer versions of our old selves. We’re dealing radically with the fundamental wrongness of human life that is left to itself and introducing the kingdom of righteousness that comes from Christ into the depths of our heart. The inner life.... that is where profound transformation must occur."
We’re not just learning to become nicer versions of our selves!
There lies the challenge for us who claim to be followers of Jesus. Do we really get down to transformation of ourselves by faithfully obeying God?
Have we seen a vision of who we can be in Christ that is compelling enough to cause us to take up the challenge of engaging with the Spirit of God in a way that disturbs everything about our lives and leads to the emergence of a new godly person?
So, let me ask again, are you building your in a way that it will be blessed with eternal longevity and God’s favor right now?
Choose today, whom you will serve! That was the challenge of Joshua to the people of Isreal, and it’s my challenge to you. Choose with faith informing your choice, for we live by faith, not by sight. Even when the commands of the Lord seem too hard, when the way of obedience appears to be without purpose - walk it out. Trust God! And, the result is a life God blesses.
Jerry D. Scott © 2007 all rights reserved
Washington Assembly of God
